1.7.6-Sarah1281
Brick!club 1.7.6 Sister Simplice put to the Proof Valjean’s pretty miserable but Fantine’s happy for once. She’s pretty close to death and delirious and the doctor wants to see Madeleine because no one was told he was leaving. She’s likely trying to figure out how long it would take to get to Cosette! Oh Fantine! Fantine had long since been a shadow of herself and is now a mere spectre. Fantine is twenty-five and has aged worse than Tholomyes with her wrinkled brow, flabby cheeks, gun-less teeth, clay skin, and graying hair. She won’t live long enough to grow old so her body is simulating it for her while she nears death. Fantine is literally living for her visits with Madeleine, it will be remembered, and then he doesn’t show up one day. He’s barely thinking at all of her, so caught up is he in Champmathieu. I will miss M-sur-M when it is gone, even though everyone there is terrible. And not just because then we have to do Waterloo. Fantine is receiving some of that ‘I’m dying’ strength. Fantine, like the Conventionalist before her and some people after her, can accurately predict when she will die and she has declared it will be tomorrow. And all she wants is Cosette. But I think seeing her now would break Fantine’s heart. She hadn’t been able to bear to think of lullabies she sang her child since their separation. I’ve got to say, I am not half as good at putting sad things out of my mind as Les Mis characters seem to be. Just being told to lie causes Simplice to blush. She hesitated before telling Fantine the truth that could do her great harm but still promptly did it. And Fantine, feverish as she was, drew what I believe was the logical conclusion. She is not right but how can she know of Champmathieu and Arras? If it hadn’t been for that and Madeleine had suddenly gone away where else would he have gone but Montfermeil and Cosette? He was making preparations for just such a journey, in fact, when Javert told him about the case. Fantine is being tragic again apologizing for being “naughty” in being too loud and not lying down. She is a grown woman acting like she has been a disobedient child. I’m not sure how much of that is the fever and how much of it is her learning the lessons she has been taught by life. It says she’s been gone for five years but wasn’t she twenty-two when she left Cosette behind? And now five years later she is twenty-five? She can’t decide if she is stealing years from Enjolras or having them stolen from her like Enjolras, it seems. Both, I guess. Fantine has apparently not been soured to surprises after that last one that ruined her life. I would be. I agree that it is heartbreaking to just not see your children for years on end. I wonder if Fantine would recover, if not completely, then enough that she’d last a little longer if Valjean had actually gone to get Cosette. This Champmathieu situation really IS ruining everything, isn’t it?